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A quick tip for better variable names (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by sisyphean@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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Whenever you store a value that has a unit in a variable, config option or CLI switch, include the unit in the name. So:

maxRequestSize => maxRequestSizeBytes
elapsedTime => elapsedSeconds
cacheSize => cacheSizeMB
chargingTime => chargingTimeHours
fileSizeLimit => fileSizeLimitGB
temperatureThreshold => temperatureThresholdCelsius
diskSpace => diskSpaceTerabytes
flightAltitude => flightAltitudeFeet
monitorRefreshRate => monitorRefreshRateHz
serverResponseTimeout => serverResponseTimeoutMs
connectionSpeed => connectionSpeedMbps

EDIT: I know it’s better to use types to represent units. Please don’t write yet another comment about it. You can find my response to that point here: https://programming.dev/comment/219329

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[–] sisyphean@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I absolutely agree. But:

sometimes you need to modify existing code and you can't add the types necessary without a giant refactoring
you can't express units with types in:
- JSON/YAML object keys
- XML tag or attribute names
- environment variable names
- CLI switch names
- database column names
- HTTP query parameters
- programming languages without a strong type system

Obviously as a Hungarian I have a soft spot for Hungarian notation :) But in these cases I think it's warranted.

[–] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Not sure what languages you commonly work with, but in good modern languages you can simply declare "feet" as an alias of integer (or double?), and no refactoring would be required.

And any good toolchain to parse / generate JSON/etc can absolutely get the types right.